Gerboise Bleue – French Nuclear Test
https://youtu.be/V_vt3c34z3U?t=4 In February 1960, during the Algerian War (1954-62) France detonated an atomic bomb in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert. Gerboise is the French word for a desert rodent found in the Sahara. The color Bleue came from the first...
Nuclear Waste in Marshall Islands
The Runit Dome (aka Cactus Dome) is a 377 foot X 18 inch dome of radioactive debris, entombed in concrete, that stems from nuclear tests conducted in the Enewetak Atoll of the Marshall Islands by the United States between 1946...
USSR Declares Atomic Testing Halt
https://youtu.be/QrNN5ZhsC1I In March 1958 the Soviet Union declared it was halting tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs. It called on the other nuclear powers, the United States and Britain, to do the same. Moscow warned that it would resume testing if their example...
Unarmed Nuclear Bomb Dropped on South Carolina
https://youtu.be/u1s46O9FK-E In March 1958 a B-47 pilot accidentally grabbed the bomb bay door lever and released an unarmed nuclear bomb at 15,000 feet over the suburbs of Florence, South Carolina. The bomb's high explosives exploded on impact, wrecking a house and...
US Hydrogen Bomb Dropped Over Bikini Atoll
In May 1956 the United States conducted the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb. Dropped from a B-52 bomber over the island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons...
Britain Decides to Develop Thermonuclear Weapons
https://youtu.be/0RNwR1Sewh8 Great Britain successfully tested an atomic bomb in Operation Hurricane in October 1952, becoming the world's third nuclear power. However, in November 1952, the United States conducted Ivy Mike, the first successful...
President Eisenhower upholds use of atomic weapons
https://youtu.be/DqFhDplE1PI In March 1955 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told reporters “... in the event of [a] general war in the Far East, we would probably make use of some tactical small atomic weapons.” When asked to comment the following day at a press...
USS Nautilus – First Nuclear-Powered Submarine
Named after both Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the WWII submarine USS Nautilus (SS-168) ,the new nuclear-powered Nautilus was launched in 1954. Because the USS Nautilus nuclear propulsion allowed prolonged submersion...
Nationwide Atom Bomb Drills
The development of the H-bomb committed the United States to an arms race with the Soviet Union. Despite the specter of nuclear holocaust, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied to build ever more powerful nuclear weapons. The Federal Civil Defense...
Soviets Test Their First Hydrogen Bomb
Throughout the late 1940s, aware that thermonuclear weapons were developed by the United States, the Soviet Union worked to develop a hydrogen bomb to counter the perceived Cold War threat. Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov (considered the father of the Soviet...
Britain Develops Atomic Bomb
Although several British scientists worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII, after the war the U.S. government ended cooperation on nuclear weapons development. In 1947, in response to concerns about American isolationism and Britain losing its great...
Truman Announces U.S. Has Hydrogen Bomb
In his state of the union address in January 1952, President Harry Truman announced that the U.S. had successfully developed a hydrogen bomb. A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb), is a second-generation nuclear...
USSR Acknowledges It Has Atomic Bomb
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USSR utilized intelligence gathered from the German nuclear weapons project and the American Manhattan Project to aggressively pursue the development of a Russian atomic bomb. In August 1949, the...
Did The U.S. Deploy Bioweapons During the Korean War?
https://youtu.be/Y4ALYK8c5Yg A 1950s report published in Peking by an international commission concluded that the U.S. used bioweapons on North Korea. The report raised doubts about claims that captured Americans were brainwashed into confessing the use of such...
First H-Bomb Test on Eniwetok Atoll
https://youtu.be/oR3_7A_rQD0 In January 1950, President Harry Truman, despite strong reservations of the Atomic Energy Commission, made the controversial decision to intensify research and production of thermonuclear weapons. On May 12th, 1951, the United States,...
Truman Hints A-Bomb
https://youtu.be/WQ5X_N4CzUA On November 30, 1950, after the Chinese Communist army entered the Korean conflict, President Harry Truman announced that he was prepared to authorize use of atomic weapons in order to achieve peace in Korea. Additionally, Truman accused...
Nuclear Espionage
https://youtu.be/mxmsBePZwHY In January 1950, the German-born physicist Klaus Fuchs, working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, was arrested for passing key documents to the Soviets throughout WWII. Fuchs identified his courier as the...
Nuclear “Doom” Towns
https://youtu.be/wgpo0qAfwDk In the 1950s, nuclear testing began at the Nevada National Security Site with nuclear bombs mounted on top of a 1500 foot detonation tower so the fireball wouldn't damage the monitoring equipment. "Doom" towns were assembled with shops,...
B-36 Crash~British Columbia
https://youtu.be/uLnagDIlfZQ In February 1950 a US Air Force B-36 crashed near the coast of northern British Columbia during a simulated nuclear attack on San Francisco. A Mark 4 nuclear bomb, which lacked the plutonium core needed for a nuclear blast, was...
Einstein Warns of Arms Race
https://youtu.be/K4MjwIFoPn0 Transcript: The Eleanor Roosevelt Show." NBC Radio February 1950 ALBERT EINSTEIN (Physicist): ... The idea of achieving security through national armament is, at the present state of military technique, a disastrous illusion. On the part...
U.S. Reveals H-Bomb Plans
In 1949 the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. https://youtu.be/ZQOZp4ThymU USSR conducts its first atomic bomb test - 1949 Several weeks after a successful Soviet...
Klaus Fuchs Atomic Spy
https://youtu.be/mqQ5_Na8DIc The German theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs helped develop the first effective atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the WWII Manhattan Project. German born, Fuchs fled Nazi Germany and became a British citizen in August 1942. As a long-time...
Soviet Atomic Bomb
https://youtu.be/sXwSbkdVQro In August 1949 the USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb at a remote site in Kazakhstan with the codename “First Lightning.” Buildings, bridges, other structure and caged animals were placed nearby to measure the effects of...
Kalashnikov AK-47
Reliable in extreme conditions, simple to use and cheap to produce – the AK-47 assault rifle was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov after WWII. The originalI AK-47 model has spawned a host of derivative assault rifles. The AK-47 is reportedly the...
Bikini Atoll Atomic Bomb
On 1 July 1946, the United States conducted Operation Crossroads Test Able, the first of a series of 67 American nuclear tests after WWII. The explosion took place at the Bikini Atoll lagoon, situated in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The bomb,...